this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2025
13 points (100.0% liked)

Ask Electronics

4017 readers
1 users here now

For questions about component-level electronic circuits, tools and equipment.

Rules

1: Be nice.

2: Be on-topic (eg: Electronic, not electrical).

3: No commercial stuff, buying, selling or valuations.

4: Be safe.


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Hi,

I just spent a lot of last week trying to access the console of an old datacenter switch. I made a cable from the pinout of a similar switch.

My switch is a Dell S3048-ON this was for a C9010, it turned out to be correct.

So I tried over and over to make it work, but kept getting this garbled mess, but the mess was consistent with the rythm of a booting switch, and it kind of always looked the same

With many of these, I have many spares I thought they were broken, but they were not

I checked the signals with oscilloscope they were, dirty

So I made the signals cleaner by tidying it up

But still, it is a mess of garbled text !

Here I am using the other kind of serial adapter, this one serial to ethernet

Here is two runs, still garbled

As a last ditch attempt, I remembered one my old server has a real serial port !!

And it worked !

message continued in comment

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

I just soldered one of those up for myself the other week, I've got an old stash of those chips and was trying to resurrect a classic LEGO Mindstorms brain. Figures that you can get a cheapo adapter on Alibaba.